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Philosopher Fridays: Berkeley

Welcome to Philosopher Fridays, where I tackle philosophers I find inspiring, interesting, intriguing, and occasionally, incomprehensible and even infuriating. These entries are not meant to be in any way comprehensive or reflective of the general opinion held by the scholarly community. This will be the last Philosopher Fridays entry for a little while, as I’ll be shifting my focus to building up The Philosopher’s Lexiconin the next few weeks.

BERKELEY:George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, was an early modern philosopher, born in Ireland 1685 and died in Oxford in 1753. While he wrote widely, covering everything from apologetics to medicine, he is undoubtedly most famous for his defense of what is known as empirical idealism, subjective idealism, or immaterialism, depending on who you ask. He tookthe central tenet of empiricism – simply put, that “seeing is believing” – to it’s furthest conclusion, arguing that sensing objects isn’t…